Secession Era Editorials Project

The Opinion of Chief Justice Taney

Albany, New York, Evening Journal [Republican]

(10 March 1857)

We print to-day a sophistical, dogmatic, muddy,
and extreme Pro-Slavery document, which
future historians will speak of as the present age
speaks of the edicts of Jeffries and the Star
Chamber. Unworthy of the Bench from which
it was delivered, unworthy even of the previous
reputation of the jurist who delivered it,
unworthy of the American people, and of the nineteenth
century, it will be a blot upon our National
character abroad, and a long-remembered
shame at home. It declares that the slaveholder
may take his Slaves and hold them in any
Territory under Federal control, and that neither
Congress, nor the Territorial Government, nor
the People, have the power now or hereafter to
forbid him. It declares that the Constitution,
though established "to secure Liberty,"
nowhere protects the existence of Freedom, and
though it never mentions the word "Slave,"
everywhere legalizes Slavery! The monstrous
absurdity of the argument, is only equalled by
the astonishing revolution it seeks to effect in
our jurisprudence. It falsifies the most reliable
history, abrogates the most solemn Law, belies
the dead and stultifies the living, -- in order to
make what has heretofore been a local evil,
hereafter a National institution!

This document was produced as part of a document analysis project
by Lloyd Benson, Department of History, Furman University.
(Proofing info: Entered by Lloyd Benson. .)
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